British Psychoanalytic Association

06/04/2026

"As his epigraph, he has chosen this quotation from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet: “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” In examining this concept, the author [Stephen Grosz] doesn’t spare himself: Love’s Labour begins in 1983, when he had his first psychoanalytic session as a patient—part of his training—and says of himself, “I was thirty-one years old and immature. I was impulsive and quick to fall in love, and often confused intensity with intimacy.” "

For his second book, the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz tackles one of our deepest—and oftentimes most befuddling—mental states

01/04/2026

Join us in London, UK, on Sunday, 10th May, for an exclusive screening and discussion of 'Outsider Freud'. Through an intimate lens, the film reveals new dimensions of Freud’s legacy, focusing on being an outsider.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Yair Qedar (Director), Lisa Appignanesi (Writer/Novelist), Lesley Caldwell (Psychoanalyst), Noel Hess (Psychoanalyst) and chaired by Joan Thompson (Psychoanalyst).

For more details and to book your ticket, visit: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-film-event-outsider-freud

28/03/2026

Listen to psychoanalysts and contributors to 'Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India' as they discuss their new volume on the New Books Network.

Moving beyond the traditional Eurocentric focus on the Oedipal complex, this book explores the “primal relationship” - the foundational bond between mother and infant - and how it is shaped within the cultural contexts of Japan and India. Bringing together diverse clinical and theoretical perspectives, the authors examine how the maternal matrix in these societies offers alternative ways of understanding the development of the self, intimacy, and dependency, challenging the assumed universality of Western psychoanalytic models.

Listen to this podcast episode here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/psychoanalytic-explorations-into-the-primal-relationship-in-japan-and-india

23/03/2026

Join us this Wednesday, 25 March, for the last Introductory Lecture this term, focused on the analytic attitude.

The therapeutic function depends on the analyst’s openness and sensitivity as well as their capacity for detailed observation, which enables them to follow the patient’s material in detail to establish the main anxiety at any moment. The analyst also has to know that there is a healthier, sane part in every patient that, if understood, consistently tries to communicate to the therapist the predicament the patient finds himself/herself in.

Book your ticket here (under the 'Apply' tab): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

22/03/2026

“This came from an experience with a patient. It was early in my analytic training, and I was working with a supervisor who I really admired, and worked with her for a number of years. She was post-Kleinian, and was great at interpretation, formulation, and she was really helpful with just starting to guide me towards a lot of this work. I remember describing to her a patient session, and I was going through my process notes, and I said, ‘I feel like the patient is inside of me. I feel like they want something that’s in me, and I don’t know what it is, and I can’t quite access my own self, I don’t know what to do’. It was through this initial experience where I really felt why analytic training versus other less intense training, we were also right at the time doing infant development, offered so much. It was early in my training and she suggested I think about an infant or even a toddler when they want something from their parents – they want something from their mother. The mother kind of feels this kind of gripping or this yearning from them, the baby wanting something. I started to think of my patients, not as infants or babies, but that what I was feeling was that there was something that the person I was working with needed, and they didn’t have words yet to tell me what that was.”

Listen to the full episode here:

“This came from an experience with a patient. It was early in my analytic training, and I was working with a supervisor who I really admired, and worked with her for a number of years. She was post-Kleinian, and was great at interpretation, formulation, and she was really helpful with just startin...

16/03/2026

Join us this Wednesday, 18 March, to learn about the important place dreams have in the practice of psychoanalysis. Together with psychoanalyst David P***k, we will explore their value and significance in the clinical setting and use a combination of theory and case material to demonstrate this.

Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

13/03/2026

In this panel discussion, renowned experts in psychoanalysis, cultural studies, literature, and history discuss how we navigate the complex psychological terrain of cultural identity and loss. Under the title "Transience, Transference, and the Dispossessed", they examine the contemporary significance of vanished places, lost rituals, and cultural dispossession - because "History does not repeat itself, but we can learn from it." (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017)

The panel discussion is part of "Rooted & Displaced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meaning of Place. An International Roundtable Series", a collaboration between the Sigmund Freud Museum, the Freud Foundation US and the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center.

Watch it here:

Panel discussion, 8.11.2025With*Brigid Doherty,* Art Historian, Princeton University/New Jersey*Jane Tillman,* Psychoanalyst, Austen Riggs Center/ Massachuse...

09/03/2026

In recent years, narcissism has made its way into popular discourse, being used to describe an increasingly wide range of psychological phenomena, whilst the label “narcissist” is commonly applied to all sorts of people in the public eye, from celebrities to politicians. But what exactly is narcissism?

In this Wednesday's (11 March) Introductory Lecture, psychoanalyst Brett Morris will explore various aspects of the psychoanalytic understanding of narcissism, from Freud to the present day. He will give thought to the possible causes of narcissism, how narcissism manifests in everyday life and in the consulting room, and how contemporary psychoanalysts work with narcissism.

Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

28/02/2026

On Saturday 7 March, join us for a day of exploration of autistic states of mind, both in children and in adults, and how we can think about them psychoanalytically.

The conference will start with an introduction concerning some of the key psychoanalytic findings from work with children on the autism spectrum. The conference will go on to show, first, how an awareness of these features can add to the understanding of adult patients who are not ‘normal neurotic’.

This will be followed by a presentation of work with a child, in order to show what the actual syndrome looks like and how it can be approached psychoanalytically. The parent/infant relationship will then be explored by two analysts who were involved in an early intervention project. This revealed the importance of the interaction between parents and their at-risk toddlers in influencing whether a toddler receives a diagnosis.

The day will close with a plenary discussion.

Find out more and book your ticket here: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-scientific-conference-psychoanalysis-on-the-spectrum-encounters-with-primitive-mental-states/

27/02/2026

Listen to this article by adult and child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, which explores the relationship between compulsion and the body in childhood and adolescence. Using psychoanalytic theory, she analyses how the compulsive repetition of self-destructive behaviours can represent an attempt to process and make sense of early traumatic experiences.

The article highlights the importance of early therapeutic intervention in childhood to prevent emotional and addictive problems later in life.

Listen here:

In this article, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur explores the relationship between compulsion and the body in childhood and adolescence. Using psychoanalytic theory, she analyzes how the compulsive repetition of self-destructive behaviors can represent an attempt to process and make sense of early traum...

24/02/2026

"Bumping into my analyst in the street was uncanny. He knows me well, and I know little about him, nor do I want to. In a sense, he is like an invisible man, a kind of ghost, but at the same time, substantial and forthright in his opinions.

Standing there with him, before my family, members of which represent different epochs of my life, all together now and relatively harmonious, I felt compelled to acknowledge something. A considerable portion of this success belongs to my work with him."

He was like an invisible man, a kind of ghost, but at the same time, substantial and forthright in his opinions.

22/02/2026

Join us this Wednesday, 25 February, to learn more about the psychoanalytic concepts of transference, projection and countertransference. The resulting emotional experience of all of these processes is present in all of our relationships and is essential to psychoanalytic work - it informs the analyst about the potential unconscious material the patient is bringing.

Book your place here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/